Termite

I think the previous responses have done a decent job of discussing natural selection and how differences in metabolic investment can give rise to sexual dimorphism, but if you'd like to go even deeper down this rabbit hole, I'd suggest reading The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm by Gould and Lewontin. It's a seminal paper in evolutionary biology which challenges a habit that many average Joe purveyors of evolution and even some biologists have: variation can always be explained away as adaptation, rather than a necessity born out of physical/environmental constraint or any number of other possibilities.

As for the reference to "harems," that's just a convenient, if unfortunate, analogy. Lots of anthropologists have observed and bemoaned the ways in which scientific discourse foists meaning on nature that really isn't there (e.g. pathogens/parasites are "bad," masculine, warlike language used in reference to sperm fusing with the egg, etc.)

This is definitely the case for the Japanese girl groups. AKB48 does attract a male audience, but that male audience isn't comprised of "boys." It's mainly otaku. Their largest - though perhaps not most dedicated - demographic is still young girls who want to be just like them.

Which I find super sad, but hey, what do I know?

@clarkj1981: I'll preface this by saying that I've only seen him speak (haven't read any of his books).

He regularly engaged with ideas on the cruelty of God, the inhumanity of the flood narrative, and other questions relating to the moral justifications of God's behavior, usually in the OT, and yet rarely brought up the countless interesting interpretations of these very same issues that have been brought up by theologians and philosophers throughout the ages. Another example would be the problem of evil, which has also been the grounds for a lot of great discussions and debates over the ages. By thinking about these sorts of things, I think a lot of believers throughout history developed very nuanced views on God that atheists would probably find much more agreeable.

Or, you could just stop your inquiry at, "well there's bad things in the world, and God - who I'm assuming must act exactly like a person for whatever reason - could change that, so he's evil." I'm an atheist, and even I think that's profoundly ignorant. Hell, even the totally unsatisfying end to Job ("I made the universe, Job; your probing questions about justice are irrelevant") is still more insightful and thought-provoking than pretty much anything Hitchens had to say on the matter.

The Pyramids are magical, The people of Roanoke didn't integrate into surrounding populations and the opening section of the Timaeus by Plato - a dramatist turned philosopher - far from being a cliffhanger due to the author not completing the trilogy the dialogue was supposed to preface, is a historical account of an actual place called Atlantis (which may have existed - who knows? What would it prove?)

You seem to be rejecting, or at least seriously doubting all plausible and reasonable explanations for your examples of "mysteries," but the mere idea of an athletic woman managing, in a moment of duress, to overcome a man is so troubling as to break your sense of immersion.

I'm lost.

Interpreting a work in light of modern tastes and morals, so long as we recognize we're thinking anachronistically, makes sense. Our only real experience of the art comes from our perspective as people living in this time and dealing with contemporary issues. There's great value in understanding the historical/social context in which the artist made his or her statement, but there's also value in observing how the work relates to our experience now.

As someone who appreciates art quite a bit, I completely disagree with the idea that only aesthetics matters. There's plenty of art that I don't particularly appreciate from an aesthetic point of view that still appeal to me because of the ideas it contains.

Specifically on the topic of feminism, I think there's a lot to the general idea that video games reflect simplistic and harmful ideas about the place of women in society. The issue I take with most of the points people make about this, however, is that there's an excessive focus on specific examples. You can't point at any one example of women serving a passive role in the story, for instance, and say that this somehow says something about the creators or our culture. There are all sorts of reasons to have a woman in a passive role, foremost among them the fact that the main character the creator(s) wanted just happened to be male. It's only when we look at games in a larger context and observe trends that we can say anything meaningful about our times.

If people, and I know some do, imply that a particular game ought to be different just to fit some sort of social agenda, they're idiots. But noting the ways in which art reveals troubling things about our ideas of gender, race, violence, etc., is important. Are we supposed to ignore how Hildegard of Bingen attributes female innocence in original sin not to actual goodness but weakness, and instead focus solely on her use of fantastical imagery? Do we ignore Joseph Conrad's caricaturization of Africa and its people in favor of his sonorous narrative voice?

Well, you can if you want, but I'm not going to miss out on a lot of what makes art meaningful just because it's supposedly not relevant.

They like them - at least, the people I know do. Games like Halo and Call of Duty had as much time sunk into them as the big Japanese games did.

Happy New Year from Japan!

Enka flowed from my television ceaselessly; it was wonderful.

お正月おめでとう！

Looks like people don't much care for the ending.

@mosespippy: I think the first em dash he uses is completely defensible. A semicolon in that position would look extremely awkward and out of place. It would make more sense to put a semicolon there if he was writing a formal paper, of course, but he's not. The dash makes the introduction snappier and matches the tone he is going for.

" @Termite said:

" @MysteriousBob said:

" How is Cloud 'not that bad'? Its one of the flat out worse. It sounds like hippie crap like naming a kid 'Hope' or something. "

Yep, hippie names, like Hope.

... "

OK, do you have a point? Hope is an awful hippie name as is 'Destiny' or some shit like that. Intolerable. "